Every Monday morning, for the past few months, I ring the lady at Le Royal, in Castres, the closest bureau de tabac that sells the Guardian. I ask in pidgin French if she still has a copy of the Saturday edition from the weekend just gone. She always confirms that she has (with a very strong southern accent, more Spanish than French really), and is happy to reserve one for me. I don’t need to give my name. She knows who I am. After I put my two-year-old daughter to bed for a siesta and quickly have some lunch, leaving her with my in-laws, I take the car and drive 20 to 30 minutes, purely to buy the paper. I don’t have an iPad, and even though I do have an iPhone, reading online on such a small screen is not the same. Also, as we live in the middle of nowhere in the Midi-Pyrénées, and as I am the house-husband and expat father abroad, it gives me an excuse to get out.
I’m 35, originally from Northampton and, until my emigration in March with my French wife and our daughter, a practising optometrist. Ever since I qualified just over 10 years ago I realised what I actually wanted to be was a writer. I had a short story published in an anthology by Tindal Street Press (Roads Ahead, ed. Catherine O’Flynn) in 2009, which gave me the validation I needed. The Guardian reviewed the book in the Saturday edition, and I’ve been hooked ever since. The weekend edition is greater than the sum of its parts. There is also, of course, the Observer, but I have yet to pluck up the courage to ask the lady to source that for me. Still, it’s lovely to stay in touch, to look back over the past week’s events in the UK and around the globe. But it is Review I look forward to the most. It continues to broaden my literary horizons and helps me become a better writer, because it makes me a better reader. I’m not so homesick when I have the Guardian in my hands.
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